Sutton will say something profound that will help make sense of this sudden madness.
“I’ll show you,” he answers, beckoning me to follow him deeper into the bunker. He gently pushes past an elderly Unchanged woman, acknowledging her by name as if she matters, then takes me down another short corridor and into a large L-shaped space. We have to step over and around even more people to get through. One man is badly burned, his face heavily scarred, but his wounds are clean and have been obviously been treated. “See that?”
“See what?”
“The kids. Right over on the far side, there’s a couple of kids playing.”
I follow the line of his gaze and quickly spot the children. For a few seconds I’m transfixed. They’re playing. These are the first kids I’ve seen since the start of the war who aren’t fighting or screaming, or throwing themselves at me and attacking, or standing swaying in a dark corner in a catatonic haze … these children are actually playing. They’re laughing and talking and interacting with each other. They’re pushing each other around and picking themselves back up and … and it’s hard to come to terms with what I’m seeing. This behavior—so normal and innocent—now seems strange and unnatural. It’s hard to believe that even now, even after being buried underground in this cold, damp, dark armpit of a place for who knows how long, they’re still managing to find something positive in their dire and hopeless situation. For the briefest of moments I almost feel a sense of regret. How many people like this have I killed?
FOCUS!
“What about them?” I ask.
“See the older girl with the boy on her knee? Sitting just over from the others?”
I immediately see who he’s talking about. Separated slightly from the rest of the young group and sitting in the soft circle of light coming from another lamp, a girl is holding a toddler. She looks like an underage mom, probably in her late teens, and he’s no older than two years old, three at the most. He sits on her knee and she holds him tight, arms wrapped around him, gently bouncing him up and down. She probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. It’s an instinctive, settling, protecting movement.
“That boy,” he says, his voice suddenly lower and the tone noticeably different, “is my grandson.”
“Your grandson? But how…?”
He moves me away, turning me around so I’m not staring. I can’t help looking back.
“Please … they don’t know. None of them know.”
“I don’t understand. How?”
“I don’t know what it was like for you, Danny, but I had my doubts about the war from the very beginning. I kept fighting because I thought I had to, because I thought I had to choose a side and if I didn’t kill them they’d kill me, but I didn’t get swept up on the wave of it all like everybody else did. I started to wonder whether there really was a difference between us at all, or whether the Hate and the Change were just the results of some massive, manufactured social paranoia.”
“You think? After all that’s happened?”
“Why not? How many people did you know who were religious? There used to be thousands of religions with barely a shred of evidence between the lot of them, all of them the product of overactive imaginations, superstitions, and fear. People used to kill each other because they believed in different versions of stories that could never be proved or disproved, used to let themselves die because some book said they shouldn’t have blood transfusions, used to cut their hair a certain way or grow their hair or cut off their foreskins or abstain from sex … None of the divisions between them were a million miles from what happened with the Hate, were they? Intangible. Inexplicable. Pointless.”
I don’t bother to reply. This isn’t the time for theological debate. If there ever was a God, he’s long since packed his bags and moved on.
“After a few weeks,” he continues, rant over, “I ended up back around the area where I used to live and where what was left of my family still were. That was where I fell in with Simon Penkridge and Selena, and they helped me learn how to hold the Hate. It was a logical progression. It felt natural and right.”
“But you didn’t get sent into the cities?”
“Like I said, I didn’t buy into the fighting like everyone else. I got out before it was too late. I don’t know, maybe people like you and me have got some predetermined setting that’s different from the rest. I think more people could have learned to hold the Hate if they’d stopped fighting long enough to be shown how. Maybe not the worst of the fighters, but the rest of them.”
“The underclass?”
“Yes. The people who only fight when they absolutely have to, not because they want to. Problem is, most people like that have been crushed or killed and all we’re left with now are dumb feral bastards like this guy Hinchcliffe and his crew. You and me, Danny, we can see beyond the battle and look toward other things, bigger things…”
I agree with him to an extent, but right now all I’m trying to do is look beyond being trapped in this bunker. Regardless of anything Sutton might say (and he hasn’t actually said a lot so far), I still want out of here. I don’t need any of this. It’s another dangerous and unnecessary complication I could do without. I’ve only been here a few minutes and already I feel like I’m caught between Sutton trying to pull me in one direction and Hinchcliffe the other. If I don’t do something about it fast I’ll be torn in half: ripped straight down the middle.
“I found an Unchanged camp and I was scavenging food from them,” Sutton continues. “I watched them from a distance for days, scared to get too close. I didn’t trust myself, didn’t know what I’d do. All I knew was that there were faces there I recognized … friends, people I used to see in the street … and then I saw Jodie with little Andrew.”
“Andrew?”
He nods back across the shelter again.
“My grandson. Jodie was my daughter-in-law. My son was already long gone, either dead or lost fighting somewhere, but those two were both Unchanged. Eventually they were picked up by the military. They were being evacuated to one of the refugee camps when the convoy they were traveling in was attacked. I’d been following them because I didn’t know what else to do. Jodie was killed, but some of the others managed to get away, and they took Andrew with them. I waited until I was completely sure of myself, until I knew I could definitely control myself and not attack, then I helped them and hid them. Only Parker and Dean and a couple of others really know what I am.”
“What about the rest of them?”
“They think I’m like them. They think I’m one of the Unchanged who can fake the Hate.”
“And what about me?”
“They’ll assume you’re the same.”
Even now, after all this time, the very notion of being thought of as Unchanged still stirs up some deep- rooted emotion inside me. It’s an uncomfortable, disproportionate reaction that’s hard to keep swallowed down. It’s even more difficult to suppress my feelings when I start to wonder if they might be right. Could that be what we both really are?
“So how did you end up here?” I ask, suddenly desperate for a distraction.
“Long story … maybe I’ll have time to tell you one day. Believe it or not, I figure this is probably the safest part of the country, geographically, that is. And when I found this bunker…”
“How did you find it?”
“I had a friend who used to visit decommissioned bunkers. A weird hobby, I know, but there you go. I remembered him telling me about a few places down in this neck of the woods.”
“Very convenient.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Well, that’s how it is.”
“So if it’s your grandson you’re worried about,” I ask, “why not just get him out of here and leave the rest of this bunch behind?”
He shakes his head and leads me back to a slightly quieter part of the room.
“You’re the only person who knows about Andrew. I didn’t used to see him that often. He was barely a year old when the war started. He hardly even knew me.”
“But you haven’t answered my question.”
“Apart from the fact he’ll never survive anywhere else, I don’t think I’d be any good for him. I’m not getting
